


seven little sentences

by cirrus (themorninglark)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 18:06:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10576641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/cirrus
Summary: Fragments of goodbyes, hellos, and all the little things in between.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strikinglight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/gifts).



> For Meg, for re-igniting KageSuga feels, and just because :)

 

**1\. “bye."**

Sugawara doesn’t hear it so much as _sees_ it, the farewell Kageyama mouths from across the courtyard, and then a classmate throws his arm around him and he’s swept up on a tide that carries him all the way to the school gates, a shower of windswept _sakura_ all around the graduating third years like they’ve stepped right into a MV. He can hear the guitar, the nostalgic coda, and when he turns around, Kageyama’s nearly out of sight. As he watches that receding figure, Sugawara’s last impression is: _he stands taller, now._

 

**2\. “my name is sugawara koushi, and i’m a setter.”**

It’s a line he’s said often enough in his life that it ought to come easily to his lips, and not often enough that every time he says it, he feels the years clatter in his wake like dominos. One by one, they collapse on themselves and lie down, a spiralling pattern that’s only clear on hindsight.

Always, a _first_ ; always, a new beginning, when he introduces himself like this, and framed against the net, flanked (without fail) by taller teammates, he finds that university is no exception. Still, the words sound different, as they do every time he utters them all over again. He makes the declaration with less hesitation than in middle school, less bright-eyed wonder than in high school, and a fuller heart than either, because he has learned what it is to _be a setter_ , and he knows who to thank for that.

Sugawara clasps his hands behind his back. He nods confidently at the strangers who will become his _senpai_ , and holds every fallen domino close.

 

 

**3\. “good luck!”**

He tucks his phone back into his pocket as he runs up the stairs, a little breathless. He doesn’t have time to type any more than that, but that’s all right; he’d rather not add _I’m somewhere in the stands_ , anyway. It tickles his fancy to keep some things a surprise. Asahi would raise an eyebrow, make one of his only half-jokey remarks about _Suga’s odd sense of humour_.

Sugawara hurries down to the front and throws himself against the railing, takes in the view of the court from above. After all this time, listening has become second nature. It is the calm that sings clearest to him. The tangible pause that Kageyama takes before he serves, the sweep of his arm, and the hush that falls across the stadium.

 

 

**4\. “it’s raining in tokyo.”**

It sounds so remarkably banal, the weather report. Sugawara immediately regrets giving it. Surely, he berates himself, he’s a better conversationalist than that, even at 2 AM.

The neon-lit strains of someone’s electronica ring out through the dorm. Someone else yells: _keep it down!_ Sugawara, in the meantime, is at the stove in the common kitchen, stirring a pot of instant _ramen_ for dinner as he cradles his phone between shoulder and ear. He has a pile of reading waiting for him and laundry that needs to be folded. The lull at the other end of the line helps him focus, reminds him of simplicity.

Outside, the season’s slipping by in a sun-soaked haze, mists and umbrellas sprouting like wildflowers across asphalt. Before he knows it, it will be training camp again, and then the leaves will turn.

He hears a soft static, a crackle and a sigh; a door sliding open. There’s the roaring sound of a downpour to match the one battering at his window, and Sugawara can’t help smiling because he can picture Kageyama all too well, staring out into his backyard, at the grey horizon of the mountains like he could tear across the road to reach the light beyond.

The clouds bridge their vast sky, every raindrop a running stitch in _goodnight. see you soon._

 

 

**5\. “hey, your hand—”**

There’s no cause for _alarm_. It’s just a scrape on the heel of his palm, and Sugawara knows perfectly the special kind of hell that setters put their hands through, how strong they are, how much they can take before breaking, _this_ pair of hands in particular.

He can’t help it anyway. He simply _has_ to ask. Curiosity’s yet to kill _this_ cat, but not, as Daichi used to tease, for want of trying—

Kageyama’s hand is awfully warm, and that’s coming from someone who’s been called a _human heater_ by the unfortunate teammates who’ve had to sleep on the futon next to his at camp. Sugawara leans down to inspect the dinosaur-print plaster, grins and asks if Hinata’s sister had stocked the first-aid kit that day. The brontosaurus is _especially_ charming.

The tips of Kageyama’s ears are pink, but he doesn’t pull away, and Sugawara counts that as a win.

 

 

**6\. “i don’t know what you’re doing here, but it looks like you could use some _takoyaki_.”**

In another life, Sugawara would have delivered that line under the sultry glow of a red lantern, strung up like a second moon in a balmy, dream-kissed evening. Preferably on a bridge. All kinds of beautiful scenes happen on bridges.

In this life, he is threefold betrayed: by the prosaic light of an ordinary lamp on the street, by Tokyo’s most unbearable heat wave in ten years, and by his own sweaty butterfingers. He watches the _takoyaki_ , still melty on the inside, fall off the toothpick and land on the ground between them.

It is with no small amount of self-deprecating humour that Sugawara feels his lips twist, feels the laugh bubble up helpless from his throat; this is who he is in this life, and there is no smoothing it over. All of his clumsiness, his good intentions, the way he trips over his own feet and picks himself up again, determined, determined—

But in this life, it is Kageyama Tobio he is sharing _takoyaki_ with, and so it is honest eyes that meet his own, see through him.

Sugawara lets them.

 

 

**7\. “hi."**

The _sakura_ are falling again. He hears it, this time.

When he turns, Kageyama is facing him from the university gates, no longer a receding figure.

 

 


End file.
